July 8
Today we took a bus tour to many of the famous natural highlights in northern Iceland. The sites were quite crowded, which felt particularly odd given our last week of mostly isolated destinations. We began in Husevik with a visit to the Whaling Museum. It would have been nice to spend more time there, as it had a great collection of skeletons and natural history content. The room devoted to the changes (and predicted changes) to sea ice coverage, and the discussion of whales as an important carbon sink were fascinating.
Next we drove to the Black Crater, a 1km-wide black sand crater formed by steam eruptions from a fissure. We hiked up to the rim, which gave a great view of the surrounding countryside and Lake Myvatn (“midgewater”). Next we walked through Dimmuborgem, a valley with lava pillars in shapes evocative of trolls. We stopped at a lava cave next to one of many fissures in this region that represent the meeting of the European and American tectonic plates. The plates are moving apart by 2-2.5 cm each year. Iceland is of course very active with volcanos and associated thermal features. We visited an area of mud pots and fulmeroles that reminded us of Yellowstone.
We ate lunch along Lake Myvatn, including a stop at a farm-based ice cream ship with flavors like strawberry-rhubarb and salted licorice. The last stop of the day was a well-known horseshoe waterfall called Godafoss or “falls of the gods”. A word about the weather— bright sun, blue skies, puffy clouds and 70 degrees!
Tonight after dinner, a local winger-songwriter-storyteller entertained us. This is the third musical performance we have had in the trip and the best. He was so humorous with his stories— for example, he said that he loved early mornings as a chance to sleep and a chance to get up — in his words “a Schroedinger concept”. His songs were beautiful and his voice lovely. He had the audience in stitches.
Pictured: mud pots, “rock troll”, Godafoss waterfall.
No comments:
Post a Comment